Ricerc@Sapienza

The paper presents two vases of the so-called Swallow Painter, which have been brought back to Italy from Switzerland
thanks to two brilliant interventions conducted by the Carabinieri Headquarters for the Protection of Cultural Heritage.
The first vase is a dinos, which can be identified as the specimen that Robert Manuel Cook – in the monograph East Greek
Pottery published in 1998 together with Pierre Dupont – signalled “on the London market” already in 1996; the second
vase is an unpublished oinochoe, which raises up to 12 the number of vases to be assigned for the moment to this painter.
The two vases perfectly fit in the production of this artisan, recognized almost unanimously, since the late Prof. Antonio
Giuliano identified him in 1963, as a painter of Eastern-Greek origin working in Vulci during the last quarter of the 7th
century BCE. The two vases confirmed the hybrid nature of his production and offered the opportunity to reconsider,
even if concisely and in an inevitably conjectural form, some issues regarding the reconstruction of the artisan context in
which he carried out his activity. As a matter of fact, many works attributable to the Swallow Painter show “accidents”
occurred during moulding or firing (the most significative example being the oinochoe presented here, bearing cracks and
air bubbles, definitely indicating a firing mistake). Was the Swallow Painter in the meantime a painter and a (poorly gifted)
potter and kilnmaster? Or was he working with local inexperienced potters and kilnmasters?